Ted Larsen - Science Was Fiction; Fiction Was Real.

Ted Larsen’s work is created with minimalist ideas to explore the nature of materiality. His studio practice goes against the norm of trying to establish a single theme or overarching agenda, and instead thrives within spontaneity and experimentation. His use of repurposed “non-art” materials forms the basis for a constantly new kind of ready-made. Larsen sees great importance for a High Art practice to examine the elegance of formal structure while bringing modernist pure shapes back down to Earth.

Larsen says of his most recent series of work, “I think of my work as painting, although I don't ‘“paint" the work in a traditional fashion. For me, I find painting to be inward-looking, primarily concerning itself with itself and it doesn't much relate to where it is placed in the environment. This new series directly addresses some of the primary issues in painting including my perception of painting’s inward-looking nature, the figure-ground relationship and how painting and sculpture are ultimately related. Paintings are indeed objects themselves and I have developed a body of work which addresses the very "objectness" of a painting. Since most of my work is shaped, my thinking also considers the area around the individual sculptures and how they participate with the architecture of the site. My work is therefore as outward-looking as it is inward-looking and functions in both ways. This exhibition furthers my concerns for the curiosity of looking, art historical assumptions and how we perceive visual culture.”

Ted Larsen is an internationally exhibiting artist and Pollock-Krasner Foundation recipient with a BA from Northern Arizona University. His work has been exhibited widely in private foundations and museums in the US, including the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO; Strohl Art Center, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; Galveston Art Center, Galveston, TX; New Mexico Museum of Art, Sante Fe, NM; The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM; The Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, NM, The Spiva Center for the Arts, Joplin, MO, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA. He has received grants from the Surdna Foundation and the Pollock Krasner Foundation, as well as residencies with the Edward F. Albee Foundation and Asilah Arts Festival in Morocco, where he was the selected to be the USA representative. Ted Larsen is included in the collections of The New Mexico Museum of Art, The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, The Edward F. Albee Foundation, The University of Miami, The University of Texas, Krasel Art Center, Lannan Foundation, among others.